Modular Phone - Project Ara

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Skully

Skully

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Following on from a previous Phoneblocks thread apparently Motorola have been working on something similar for the past year.

Remember Phonebloks and how we all had a good laugh about how unworkable and idealistic it was? It turns out Motorola has been working on a similar project for the last year, and it's called Project Ara. This is really happening.

Here's what Ara is, according to Motorola:

The design for Project Ara consists of what we call an endoskeleton (endo) and modules. The endo is the structural frame that holds all the modules in place. A module can be anything, from a new application processor to a new display or keyboard, an extra battery, a pulse oximeter--or something not yet thought of!


Motorola isn't just taking the Phonebloks vision and running with it. The company will be working with Phonebloks and its developer community to make a modular phone possible. Motorola will soon start seeking input from so-called Ara Scouts to help the Google subsidiary shape the future of Project Ara. In a few months, Motorola will begin inviting developers to design modules for the Ara platform – a Module Developer's Kit (MDK) could be ready as soon as this winter.

It almost goes without saying, but if Motorola (with Google's backing) can make this work, it's going to be an honest-to-goodness revolution in the smartphone industry. Want a better camera, but don't need much storage? You can spend big on the image sensor and cheap-out on the NAND. Speaker in your phone busted? Just disconnect it and add a new module. Rather than buy a whole new phone, you could simply upgrade the parts you want.

It's also worth noting the crowd-sourced "Thunderclap" campaign for Phonebloks is happening in about 9 hours. So, the timing here seems very convenient. This idea sounds insane, but maybe it has a real shot now.
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From Android Police - http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/1...an-open-modular-smartphone-hardware-platform/

Official Motorola blog - http://motorola-blog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/goodbye-sticky-hello-ara.html

We all thought that phoneblocks was a good idea but wouldn't work in theory. Perhaps with Google's backing this can work? They've already put the idea of customising your phone with the Moto X and this can be one step further.

I like the idea, it will be interesting to see what happens with it.
 
It requires too much backwards compatibility, just think of buying a modular phone now and what the situation could be in 2 years time, you can't expect manufacturers to keep compatibility with previous hardware all the time.

It also locks you in one manufacturer. Much more opportunity for things to go wrong as more is left to the user to tweak.

I think that if this thing goes ahead it will end up much more different than the original idea.
 
My official reasoned response to this is: L O L.

It will never work. It will be huge and have a terrible battery life, and you'll have to throw it away after 18 months anyway because a new camera will come out that only works on v2 of the backplane. So it has all the disadvantages of being made of lots of blocks (fragile, huge, fits together badly) and no advantages. Nice.
 
I've signed up to keep track of this project

Can't see it denting the high end smart phones, but I can really see it's appeal with children and teenagers.
 
Freefaller said:
Interesting.

I wonder if they've done a deal or if they sold the patent or will be involved?
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Can't remember the full details but after Phonebloks managed to get their supporter goal on a site, Motorola announced they already had been working on a similiar concept. After that Phonebloks started collaborating with the Motorola team in charge of Project Ara, which has now moved to Google.

They have a G+ page if anyone wants to follow their progress: https://plus.google.com/+GoogleATAP/posts
 
Robbo said:
I'm not sure how I feel about this, I can't really see it working, but it's an interesting idea.
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Same, it just doesn't seem like a viable idea given how much time goes into the design of a typical smartphone. However Google seem to be going for this pretty hard so perhaps it's way better then we imagine.

Interested to see the event where they reveal this tech.
 
Just posted on Android Police: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...he-product-will-work-in-model-demo-at-launch/

It actually sounds very promising if Google gets it right. If it does get very popular, then I can see this causing chaos with current smartphones due to price and it's open-source like nature.

I wonder if someone can develop a QWERTY/T9 keyboard module... would be handy and may lure those with feature phones to it.
 
Orcvader said:
Just posted on Android Police: http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/0...he-product-will-work-in-model-demo-at-launch/

It actually sounds very promising if Google gets it right. If it does get very popular, then I can see this causing chaos with current smartphones due to price and it's open-source like nature.

I wonder if someone can develop a QWERTY/T9 keyboard module... would be handy and may lure those with feature phones to it.
Click to expand...

After watching that I wonder how easy it would be to design your own modules with the assistance of their MDK?

Could be a really cool hobby and perhaps even a lucrative home-business designing creative modules!

Nice to see some real innovation, it's been pretty rare the past few years.
 
If this succeeds it will change the dynamics of the mobile phone industry. No longer will phone technology be competing, it'll be the software and the hardware behind it - and the most innovative blocks that can be created. Then it'll be about making the most powerful blocks, people will benchmark (like they do with PCs) their performance, and it'll push the industry to reinvent itself.

I personally think it's interesting. Would I buy one? At the moment, no - but in the future if it "just works" then I see no reason why not.
 
This video is a must watch:


I was sceptical at first but that demo model looks great. The magnetic connection system is just genius. There are still many questions to be answered but the concept doesn't seem as ridiculous as it did when they first announced it.
 
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